MARKING THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ATOMIC BOMBINGS OF HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI (Scholarships available)

Join us for this national gathering marking the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and offer Campaign of Non-Violence promoters and others with significant opportunities to deepen the vision and practice of nonviolent change.

Social Action & Science

Being With DyingThis Professional Training Program for Clinicians in Compassionate Care of the Seriously Ill and Dying is fostering a revolution in care of the dying and seriously ill. Clinicians learn essential tools for taking care of dying people with skill and compassion.

ChaplaincyA visionary and comprehensive two-year program for a new kind of chaplaincy to serve individuals, communities, the environment, and the world.

EDITOR'S NOTE

Welcome to Upaya eNews for July 17. This week we offer a variety of articles that focus on working or being at the edge. The articles include:

The Tortoise Drags Its Tail by Bernie Glassman

Punk, Parenting, and The Heart of the Revolution: John Malkin interviews Noah Levine

Change Is Coming...But Slowly by Alan Senauke

StoryShards Reveals Hopefulness and Clarity in a Broken World by Lisl Dennis

Compassion in Action: A Letter from Artist Olafur Eliasson

Krista Tippett Interviews Roshi Joan by Mary Desmond

On August 1, you are invited to a celebration dinner at Upaya for Roshi's 70th Birthday and Upaya's 20th Anniversary -- click here for details and to find out about more ways to celebrate Roshi's birthday!

News about Trips to Nepal and Japan in 2013: Please note that there are a number of additions to our program and retreat calendar. And for those who plan far in advance, in addition to Roshi's trips to Nepal this year and next, she will be going with Sensei Kaz Tanahashi to Japan in the fall of 2013. Early registration for these trips is advised.

Upaya invites you to celebrate Roshi Joan's 70th birthday and Upaya's 20th Anniversary on Wednesday, August 1, with a gathering in the Zendo at 5:30 pm, that will include Roshi Bernie Glassman, Wes Nisker, Zuleikha, and others, (plus Roshi Joan of course!).

Roshi has asked that in lieu of gifts, you consider making a tax-deductible donation to Upaya. Our evening celebrates not only her birthday but also Upaya's 20th anniversary in Santa Fe.

This will be followed by a delicious celebratory dinner and cake in Riverhouse and a gorgeous exhibit of Roshi's photographic work, produced in archival prints by master printer Barry Norris. Three books of her works will be available on a limited basis: "Seeing Inside"; "About Face"; and "Leaning into the Light." All may be obtained for a tax-deductible donation to Upaya. Note that two of these are limited editions.

PLEASE RSVP: If you are going to attend the dinner celebration. We need to know by July 23rd so we can plan for food and seating. You can call Beverly Croydon at the front desk with the name(s) of those planning to attend: 505-986-8518, ext 11 or email her at upaya@upaya.org.

FEATURE ARTICLES

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The Tortoise Drags Its Tail: Bernie Glassman

Roshi Bernie Glassman will be leading MAKING PEACE: The World as One Body at Upaya August 3-5. For info and to register, click here. __________

The tortoise dragging its tail is a famous image in the orient. Once while in northern Costa Rico I went to the beach at night when tortoises had come to lay their eggs. They’re really gigantic. Peter Mathiessen wrote a beautiful book – Far Tortuga. It’s in the dialect of the people in Tortuga. A little north of Costa Rica. But if you see a tortoise walking on the beach, their tail wipes away the tracks. But of course there are new tracks. The tail itself creates a new track.

One of the ways we know ourselves is by all of our criticisms of ourselves. And all of the things that we think we’re doing wrong. And we spend a lot of time trying to apologize or wipe away or being sorry, “I’m sorry I did this, I did that, I’m sorry.” And that’s the tortoise moving the tail and wiping away the tracks. So we do things and then we sort of look back, and “Oh, I did that wrong”. So we’ve left all of these tracks of the things that we didn’t do right in our mind. And now we spend a lot of time trying to get rid of all of those tracks. And that very process of doing that is creating new tracks. Then we look back and say “Oh I didn’t do that right, I didn’t get rid of that right”. When you get to the state of Not Knowing You, you aren’t busy wiping away the tracks because you don’t have the tracks. At any moment you have the ingredients that are there and you do the best thing you can (make the best meal) with those ingredients, and you offer your creation. And then you look again and see what ingredients you now have and make the best meal you can and offer it again. It’s never about “Oh that meal was too sour” or that meal was too yucky or that meal… It’s “Here I am! What are the ingredients? What do I do? Let’s do it!. And then the next moment: “Here I am! What are the ingredients? Let’s use them in the way I can best do it. And then I offer it.”

When my son, Marc, was young he would take the food that he was given and make piles of all the stuff he didn’t’ want to eat – those were his yucky piles. Then he would eat the stuff that was left – the good stuff. And then he had to figure out what to do with the yucky piles. Because his mother would say you’re supposed to eat your broccoli or whatever he called his yucky pile. He might sneak it down to the dogs. We had dogs and cats. He might put it on his sister’s plate. There were different schemes. He says that now he creates nice piles. And leaves the yucky piles – he doesn’t call them yucky piles. Making nice piles and just leaving the other stuff around. But that falls in line with this whole notion of what do we do with the ingredients we have? How do we make the best meal? How do we offer it? And when we look at our lives, what do we call our yucky piles, and then what do you do with it? And just think of how much energy you spend or your friends spend being sorry instead of just doing something new. Talking about what they didn’t do, or what yucky piles they created.

The work of the jester or coyote (North American Indians) is to work with the yucky piles. They don’t call them yucky piles. They work in the cracks of society. They call out the issues that we aren’t dealing with. So it’s a little bit like what my son shifted to. Society or we will tend to recognize those things we like. And we work with that. We invite to our homes those we like. We don’t invite to our homes those we don’t like. We don’t think of them. We don’t even think of them enough to call them yucky piles. They don’t exist. We work with things we like. It’s very normal, so the jester is trained, the coyote is trained to see what are the yucky piles that individuals, tribes, societies have created and what’s the work to be done. They’re not the only ones who work with yucky piles. There’s whole industries that have been created to work with yucky piles – the homeless in the streets, the prisons, lots of different industries have been created to get the yucky piles out of sight – so that we could just deal with all the pretty things, and not have to see the things that we have shunted aside.

Our getting to Not Know You is not hiding. Not apologizing. Not screaming at others ‘cause they’re not doing it the right way. Our way is to do things. Is to look at the ingredients, make the best meal, and do it.

Here are the ingredients. I do the best thing I can at this time. If that’s what I’m always doing there’s no tracks to be wiped away. It sometimes gets confusing to people because they don’t’ know what they’re doing. It depends on the moment – it depends on the circumstances. What we are most comfortable with is to put people in a category. Even ourselves. Many people consider consistency a virtue. Because I know what’s going to happen – I know what the schedule’s is. I know what that person’s going to do. But that’s getting to know you rather than getting to Not Know You. Getting to Not Know You is to work with the ingredients and always be open to what’s required now. It’s not even what’s required – It’s to be… free. The rain comes down pouring on your head. You don’t stop and say “what should I do? Should I get an umbrella or should I wipe the rain away? Should I put a hat on?” You don’t go through all of that. The rains coming down. If you have an umbrella you might open it. If you don’t have an umbrella but you have a rain hat you might put that on. If it’s a fancy hat you might not put it on. You might hide it. So it all depends on the ingredients.

Punk, Parenting, and The Heart of the Revolution: John Malkin interviews Noah Levine

Noah Levine will be leading THE HEART OF THE REVOLUTION: Swimming Against the Stream at Upaya September 21-23. For info and to register, click here.__________

What began as my own commitment to meditation and these little meditation groups that started in my living room in Santa Cruz thirteen years ago has grown organically into this national and international movement within Buddhism but also with a kind of an alternative to the mainstream Buddhist offerings. ...I feel really grateful.— Noah Levine

John Malkin: I’ve enjoyed reading “The Heart of the Revolution” and being reminded of Buddhist practices that you are emphasizing including compassion, forgiveness and sympathetic joy. You write about how there are two clear dead ends in trying to deal with suffering, worldliness and religion. Tell me more about those dead ends.

Noah Levine: There’s a couple of different ways to talk about it; there’s my own experiences, and (also) from ancient Buddhist scriptures. Buddhism has certainly become a major world religion and I feel pretty clear that the founder, Siddhartha Guatama, whom we refer to as The Buddha, was pretty clearly trying not to create a religion. He was trying to offer some practical tools. These things are called The Four Noble Truths and The Eightfold Path as a way to live. Not a religion, not a faith, not a devotional practice. But just some really practical guidelines of how to live our lives if we wish to be happy, if we wish to end the extra difficulties and suffering that are possible to end. Then here’s a way to do it. This was the core of his message.

Now, of course, over the past couple thousand years that message has turned from a practical pragmatic philosophy into a major world religion that has many of the same problems that all world religions have. For me, someone who grew up in the punk scene and always had been very wary of religion, when I found out that the Buddha not only talked about his teachings and practice as a form of rebellion, but called it against the stream, it resonated. When he was defining Buddhism as being the middle path – at some point he was questioned; “The middle path of what?” He said, “Well, it’s the middle between these two dead ends.” One dead end is seeking your happiness from blindly following a religious tradition, of just accepting what the religion is teaching you and not critically analyzing it or using discernment. That is a dead end. It doesn’t lead to happiness. He said, “Likewise, looking for happiness in material things; looking to the world, looking to pleasure and to accumulation and material things and successes as a source of your well-being or happiness is also a set up for disappointment and failure and bound to end in suffering. This practice and path that he is laying out and that I’m practicing and teaching now is one that leads between that of worldliness and that of blindly following religion.

Change Is Coming...But Slowly: Alan Senauke

Hozan Alan Senauke will be leading THE BODHISATTVA'S EMBRACE at Upaya August 12-13. For info and to register, click here.__________

Maggin monastery, in Yangon’s eastern Thingangyun Township, was a refuge for hundreds of dissident Burmese monks during 2007’s “Saffron Revolution.” The Saffron Revolution began with local demonstrations against arbitrary and immediate price increases, which quickly became a national movement for democracy led by many thousands of monks.

On September 26 of 2007 the Burmese junta struck back. The military attacked many monasteries, ransacking Maggin, beating and arresting abbot U Eindaka and the other monks who had come for sanctuary. A refuge as well for local people with AIDS and HIV, these patients were simply driven from the premises, left to fend for themselves in the midst of the violent military crackdown. The monastery was trashed, wood doors and walls shattered, blood-stained robes tossed into corners, the gates padlocked and guarded by the junta’s watchmen. And that is how things remained for more than four years.

On January 13 three hundred political prisoners, including nearly forty incarcerated and disrobed monks, were released from prisons around Burma. The following day a group of monks, struck the locks from Maggin’s doors and moved in.

The prisoner release is one aspect of change taking place in Burma/Myanmar in recent months. How reliable or thoroughgoing a change we are seeing is still uncertain. The 2008 Constitutional referendum — conducted just days after Cyclone Nargis left 150,000 dead in southern Burma — reserves 25% of the assembly seats to the military, virtually guaranteeing their control of the political process. The 2010 election gave 129 of 168 elected seats to the junta’s proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party. Another 56 seats, as mandated, went to the military, leaving only 34 seats to be divided among a dozen other regional and ethnic parties. On the military front, there is active combat in Kachin state, Shan state, and elsewhere, with more than 60,000 Internally Displaced People (IDP) living with war and deprivation in these areas.

Lisl Dennis will be leading STORYSHARDS, YOUR STORY REVEALS YOUR MISSION: Gathering for Women at Upaya September 14-16. For info and to register, click here.__________

Reflecting on the origins of STORYSHARDS, I observed a ladybug land on my computer. She swiftly traversed the backlit screen. Reaching the left bezel, the ladybug reversed. She cut a diagonal line to the upper right screen corner, then scuttled back across the edge of the lid. I caught up with her backside on the Apple glyph, and gentled the ladybug's tiny red-and black-spotted body into the garden. A STORYSHARD, indeed, the British fable "Ladybug, Ladybug fly away home" is about hope for saving her children in a house on fire. While only Little Anne survives by creeping under a frying pan – rather than flying into the flames – the story is a relevant parable for today. It is a call to action – about the consequences of showing up late for service in our shattered world ablaze.

STORYSHARDS AT UPAYA

The fabled ladybug's auspicious visitation to my computer screen served to focus attention – and my affirmation that the upcoming STORYSHARDS: Gathering for Women at the Upaya Zen Center, September 14th-16th, is a call to action. It is about how we show-up and engage in the world. Based on a vivid multimedia presentation, STORYSHARDS is a new fusion of Personal Story, Complexity Thinking, Engaged Creativity, and Spiritual Practice. The retreat experience – with its accompanying workbook STORYSHARDS–THE DIG: Re-forming the Vessel of Your Life – provides an opportunity to take time-out to take-to-heart the inspirational memories and motivating themes of your life that form your service in the world-at-large.

STORYSHARDS TEAM

A women's Engagement and Leadership retreat, STORYSHARDS at Upaya is about clarity, relationship, and hopefulness for your Story Forward. In hosting STORYSHARDS at Upaya, I will be joined by an exceptional team of women practitioners representing a broad spectrum. They are: Buddhist Chaplain, Psychotherapist and Wellness Coach Ann-Marie McKelvey, LPCC, MCC; Complexity Scientist and Facilitator Merle Lefkoff, PhD; and Upaya's visiting teacher from the Olympia Zen Center Eido Francis Carney, Zen Arts Scholar, Artist and Social Activist. Together, we will consider the intimate observations and fresh perspectives on how your stories reveal your mission in life – and how we all engage most effectively in our worlds.

REAL KEEPERS

What's a STORYSHARD? They are the succinct short-stories – scattered throughout our extended narratives, and punctuating our Story Lines. Often left in the dust of our fast-forward narratives, they are sifted and collected from our under-stories, side-stories, and back-stories. STORYSHARDS are the real keepers: the lessons learned, the wisdom gathered – the pithy parables unearthed from the fields of experience and wisdom. STORYSHARDS are the inspirational memories and motivating themes of your life – integral to the whole vessel. Like an archaeological dig, it takes personal spadework to recognize them, and brush off the real keepers in our fast-paced complex lives.

WILDERNESS & WEATHER

How on earth did I dig this up? Here is the context – the extended narrative from which my awareness of succinct STORYSHARDS originally emerged some time ago. Shards from the diversity of cultures exist in all shapes and sizes – sometimes sharp-edged, or softened to the touch by time and attention. The shard mnemonic emerged for me many-moons-ago while on my first retreat with the Upaya Zen Center. It was a ten-day wilderness emersion guided by outdoor savvy Upaya's Abbot Roshi Joan Halifax. For the four-day solo fast, I hauled gallons of water, and pitched-up on the banks of the Chama River with only a tarp between me and the weather.

Weather there was – mainly mental. Not a bean to eat, coyotes yipped and quipped all night. As hunger pangs subsided, I morphed into Wily Coyote, trotting light-headed and empty-bellied on prolonged early morning and evening forays above the Christ in the Desert Monastery. Penetrating shady narrowing canyons and sinking deeper into arroyos, at first, I hallucinated big cats and rattlers, casting a watchful eye everywhere.

ENTRENCHED MEANDERS

Soon becoming rambunctious, curious, and clever, I was, at the same time, observing aspects of my mind-full-of-mischief that was turning me into a rabid coyote. Mind games and heroic strategies to parry off shard-like proliferations and the bits-and-pieces of extraneous thoughts were failing. As usual, coyote was chasing her mental and emotional "tales." After a lifetime of ineffective mind-control strategies, I had deliberately entered the wilds to observe directly the whatever of tiresome entrenched mental meanders – to see if there was any promise of peace to be had on a wilderness plunge informed by Zen practice. I found out.

RAIZING THE GAZE

With a head full of coyote fabrications and constructs, I was habitually looking down at the ground. Turning up a shard, I popped it in my pocket. But here's the real Keeper Shard: As I raised my gaze out upon the boundless Northern New Mexican sage-scented vastness, with moody O'Keeffe clouds scudding above, I observed that my head cleared and my senses quickened. The coyotes yipping and quipping finally quit. I ceased, for a spell, telling-stories-about-the-story – no longer projecting me, myself and I. This glimpse of clarity was long and vivid enough to make a palpable shift in my mental weather. Walking slowly cross-country through the Rabbitbrush and dry skeletal junipers, I practiced this open-presence.

Step-by-step on the animal paths around the Chama River, I never dared drop my gaze to the ground: I was sprung for a time from trickster-mindedness. I had a new view of possible liberation from my species of mental suffering. I vowed to surrender self-conscious mental strategies born of psycho-spiritual concoctions and inflations. Hopeful, I entered the path as a student of Zen Buddhism. This Treasure Shard in my pocket was a keeper.

NATURAL WISDOM

In preparation for the wild-minded retreat, I had read Roshi Joan Halifax's THE FRUITFUL DARKNESS – A Journey Through Buddhist Practice and Tribal Wisdom (Harper Collins, 2004), recently republished with a forward by Thich Nhat Hanh. The right wisdom for a wilderness fast back then, it is even more relevant in today's alienating and broken world. Roshi Joan writes: "The sixth Inherent Condition is Wisdom, Natural Wisdom, the mind that is clear like a mirror, like space...I go to the wilderness to find the activity of Natural Wisdom...Everywhere in these worlds I find a ready mind, not stopped by conceptual knowledge, the mind that does not have to stumble over strategy as it responds directly to the world. There is no strategy in the wilderness. It is a place where Truth is experienced and expressed directly."

VISIONS & VOWS

Each one of us having directly experienced our own particular truths, and all safely back at base camp, we soloists entered a closing ceremonial circle, sharing our visions and intentions. After the circle, I was gifted a real keeper. I received a succinct Wisdom Shard – given to me by Wolfgang Brolley, a fellow retreatant and future Kailash pilgrimage trekking buddy. The gift was not actually a shard, as such. Close: it was a tiny perfectly-shaped and preserved arrow head – he had turned up two. Wolf noted that the double-edged arrowhead is capable of cutting both ways – for good or ill. Wise man Wolf stated directly to me: "I must vow to be ever watchful as to how I engage my obvious edges, move forward in life."A Wisdom Shard – a keeper worthy of remembrance – a STORYSHARD to keep in my pocket, and see clearly forever. Future Story: Chama Arrowhead Offered on Mt. Kailas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcusVgG4Ypo

SPECIES OF HOPE

While STORYSHARDS at Upaya is a women's retreat, by no means are the discriminating insights and wisdom of men not integral to our stories. Friend of the Upaya Zen Center, William deBuys, storyteller, naturalist, ecologist, environmental activist and author of award-winning books, including The Walk (Trinity University Press, 2007) www.williamdebuys.com. In a memoir of a life devoted to wilderness, he opens this book with an intimate observation of the wood grain on his pine desktop: “A species of hope resides in the possibility of seeing one thing – one phenomenon or essence – so clearly and fully that the light of its understanding illuminates the rest of life."

STORY FORWARD

Whether you are observing the grain on your writing desk, a ladybug on your computer screen, or a Memory Shard in your pocket, STORYSHARDS is a visual meditation which serves to illuminate your personal story. STORYSHARDS: Gathering for Women creates comfortable conditions, and opens the inquiries that allow for your own personal observations. The take-away spadework shards are hopefulness in a broken world, a deeper connection to yourself, an enhanced sense of creative engagement, and a clarity of purpose for your Story Forward.

Compassion in Action: A Letter from Artist Olafur Eliasson

Roshi worked closely with renowned artist Olafur Eliasson on a project this winter. Eliasson was at the same time involved with a profoundly compassionate project which has come into fruition. This is a powerful example of compassion in action and the art.__________

This letter will find you in different places on our planet and despite the distance these notes travels your presence here in Berlin is still vibrant and creative. Not a day passes with out you in one way of the other assists me in choosing a trajectory. Thank you for this it has helped me a lot in some recent hectic months.

As you all know we have not forgotten deep breathing here in the studio and this has helped us all as my fantastic studio team and myself have been working like crazy on the Little Sun project - the solar-powered lamp for everyone, for the world and this summer for London and the Olympics with Tate Modern as its host and great supporter. The project was press-launched last week at Tate and has received very good response so far. We also did a full makeover of the website - which would enjoy a visit from you, obviously.

It is a work of art that works in life and I am have become more in involved through this work with energy poverty issues and the fundamental right to light in life.

I did some film recordings last weekend with some talented dancers and movement experts in the studio. The project is about the felt feeling of physical engagement and I hope that shines through in this short film and in some of the images below:

If any of you happen to be in London on 28 July or any of the following Saturday nights, I would be more than happy to invite you for the Tate Blackouts that I am doing to focus people's awareness on light and energy access. On these evenings visitors will be able to look at the surrealist galleries at the Tate with the light of the Little Sun only. No ordinary white light - the stuff that we are so used to that we don't see it any more. In September we are launching 15 short films by film-makers living off grid or close to off grid, specially produced for this project, also at the Tate.

This project is about understanding the unequal distribution of energy worldwide. It is about connectivity and caring for those who have less light in their lives than we do, those who have no option of deciding when to turn light on, when not. It is a project that will only be successful if the lamps make it into the hands of those who need it. And to make this happen I am using every possible network to get the message across and inspire action - with the backing of many wonderful people.

So here is my request to you my compassion and deep breath friends: would you share the homepage, the images and the film clip with everyone in your networks whom you think would like this idea?

Would you push this question out to people, shout out the importance of addressing this topic? And if you know of potential retailers in remote areas, who can bring the lamps out to the end users - fantastic, too.

We'd be happy to get in contact.

The shared energy, the connectivity and our networks will be a central path to the succes of little sun being delivered to the right places.

Little sun and myself is on a journey and we would be honoured to receive any push you might offer.

Interview with Roshi Joan by Krista Tippett: Mary Desmond

At 3:15 p.m. Wednesday afternoon, a profound stillness swept through the Hall of Philosophy as Roshi Joan Halifax led the audience through a meditation that touched on death, grief and acceptance.

In the third installment of Week Three’s series based on the theme “Krista Tippett and Friends who Inspire, Commit, Act,” Halifax sat down with radio host and producer Tippett during the 2 p.m. Interfaith Lecture and discussed her life, Buddhist faith, inspirations and the vast and human concepts of death, compassion, grief — and neuroscience.

Halifax is a medical anthropologist and founder and abbot of the Upaya Zen Center. For the past 40 years, she has helped the dying and their families comprehend and grasp the reality of death and the rituals and feelings that go with the experience of dying. She has studied and written on topics such as death and compassion.

“Her wisdom about dying is informed by her wisdom about living,” Tippett said.

Halifax’s path toward Buddhism began when she was 4 years old. She contracted a virus that left her blind for two years. During those formative years, children are immersed in the process of discovery. Blindness forced Halifax to turn her curiosity inward.

“Another level of your life opens up when you recognize that you have a life that is inside,” Halifax said.

Sep 21 — 23: THE HEART OF THE REVOLUTION: Swimming Against the Stream with Noah Levine. For more info or to register, click here.

Pilgrimage to China, September 14 – 28, 2012

Photo of Sensei Kazuaki Tanahashi

PILGRIMAGE TO CHINA: In the Footsteps of Zen Master Dogenwith Sensei Kazuaki Tanahashi

Price Change! Double occupancy, $3200 per person; Single occupancy, $4000. If there are 10 or more participants: Double occupancy, $3000 per person; single occupancy, $3800. For a full description of the program and to register, click here.

Visiting and Resident Teachers

Photo of Sensei Irene Kaigetsu Kyojo Bakker

Upaya has invited a series of teachers to be with our residents and guest practitioners this year. These teachers will be supporting practice, giving dharma talks, doing interviews, doing service training, and leading seminars; we invite you to meet and practice with these dharma holders.

Note that Senseis Arlene, Robert, and Irene will be returning in 2013, as well as Wendy Johnson and Roshis Enkyo and Joan. In addition, we will be welcoming Roshi Bernie Glassman, Sensei Alan Senauke, among many other fine teachers

Ways to be at Upaya: Resident Practitioner, Guest Practitioner, Volunteer

There are many ways to deepen your practice and spend time at Upaya. One way is the Residentprogram. Upaya is accepting applications for our Resident Program, inviting practitioners to live and serve here from three months to a year or more. For more information and to apply click here or contact: rpc@upaya.org

Please visit this web page on our site to learn more about other options for staying at Upaya, including personal retreats, work exchange, and more.